Although police raids of gay-friendly bars were sadly common at the time, on that night people fought back. As two officers were escorting Castro out of the bar, the crowd shouted, "Let him go, let him go," and he pushed against the waiting patrol wagon with both feet, knocking the two cops to the ground. He was put in the back of the vehicle and detained, but was later released without charge. That night's events, including Castro's struggle against police, gave birth to the modern gay civil rights movement.
Castro was recently featured in the PBS American Experience documentary, 'Stonewall Uprising', based on David Carter's book, Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. Directed by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner, the film was released in theaters this past summer prior to the film's broadcast on PBS stations nationwide this coming April.
David Carter said that all the evidence he collected about the event made him sure that Castro's resistance to his arrest, taking place in public soon after the occurrence of the evening's tipping point--the unknown lesbian who fought the police outside the Stonewall Inn and twice escaped a patrol car she was placed into--helped guarantee that the resistance to the police raid became both massive and violent, and thus had the power to become a transforming symbol of LGBT consciousness: the Stonewall Riots.
